Grimdark Future Game - Infected Colonies vs Orc Marauders

The battlefield. Spot the Tehnolog tank!

Rick and I happened to have the Sunday open up last-minute, so I traveled down to his place to pass him the dropship and tank I painted for his Traitor Guard army, and to give his terrain set their first bloodying.

I made up two lists of about 1500 pts in Grimdark Future, and Rick played the orcs while I played the Traitor Guards using the Infected Colonies list. For the scenario I had the Guards defend a city-block, while the orcs would come in from any table edge.

Rick opened the battle by charging his Trukk right at the tank and disgorging a unit of Boyz, which proceeded to close-assault the tank.

While this occupied the attention of the tank and half my forces, his Bikes and two units of Boyz attacked from the other end of the battlefield.

I ordered the Guards defending that flank to give ground and fall back...

The dropship - now featuring twin-linked lascannons!

Then sent in the dropship/gunship to strafe the Bikes.

Some of the Boyz did make it into close-combat and eventually gain a foothold in one of the buildings, but the Orcs have taken a beating from the gunship and could not hope to take the whole block.

It was a short game, but we both had fun shoving figures across the nice terrain, rolling lots of dice, and making pew pew noises. Grimdark Future is a fun set of rules for this kind of thing, but the lack of suppression and morale rules does make it a bit simplistic. Perhaps we will give Xenos Rampant another spin in the near future; after all, Rick's collection of second-hand 40K figures is huge, and hopefully I will be able to feature more of them on this blog soon.

Tehnolog Bronekorpus Main Battle Tank

So a long time ago, before the war in Ukraine, I bought a Tehnolog heavy tank model when I bought their smaller-scaled ZOD tank company to check out the size. It was a pretty crude model, and it didn't really fit with the aesthetics of any of the forces I had, and I kept the model in my bits box.

Since then, Rick joined our group, and we started looking at Grimdark Future, and I decided to finally get the model built and painted for his traitor Imperial Guard force.

To maximise the use of the model I magnetised two of the main gun options from the kit, and added a twin-link lascannon Nowfel printed for me. To give the model a more GW look, I used an Imperial vehicle cupola I had in my bits box.

I sprayed everything with my usual grey primer.

For the paint scheme I decided to go for a two-tone urban camouflage based on the Japanese Self-Defence Force pattern. I applied masking tape to the model to give vertical and horizontal lines, and then sprayed the model with a lighter grey paint.

Once the paint has dried I removed the tape and applied some decals. The turret numbers came from some WW2 tank decals I had, and the Imperial Aquila and the Chaos symbol were GW 40K decals. In my mind the Chaos cultists painted Chaos symbols over the Imperial Aquila when they turned traitor.

I painted the tracks a dark grey, and then started the weathering process by creating a muddied look for the dozer blade. I did this by dabbing red-brown craft paint to the bottom of the blade, then a lighter brown paint at the middle part of the blade, and then mixing the two paints to form a in-between colour to blend the two parts together. This gives the appearance of the mud drying around the edges of the business end of the dozer blade.

I then did weathering to the rest of the tank by chipping, washing, and dabbing brown paint over the tracks, wheels, and the lower parts of the vehicle. The vision ports were painted in blue.

I tried my hand at painting the heated metal effect on the melta gun.

And also the plasma glow effect on the plasma cannon, which didn't really work.

All in all it was a simple project. I hope to see this guy in action soon.

Grimdark Future and Zombicide: Invasion

I had to take a break from gaming in the month of May due to family and personal health issues, but the worst is - fingers crossed - over, and we managed to get together for a session for June.

Genestealers rush the unsuspecting Ratling snipers, at what would afterwards be called 'Hamburger Rock'.

As usual we played two games. The first one was a 4-player, free-for-all game of Grimdark Future.

The Grimdark Future rules were suggested by Rick, who unfortunately was unable to attend the session. I had a look at the rules, and thought they were easy to learn and remember: the kind of rules that a group that doesn't play regularly needs.

On the other side of the table, Eldar tangle with Terminators.

I wanted to do a fun scenario instead of a straight two-sided battle and dug up an old copy of Wargames Illustrated from my collection, which had a Dropwing scenario featuring different factions all trying to seize transports so they can bug out of an area. I decided to lean heavily into this and asked everyone to bring a small force of their 40K figures.

Our game ended up with four factions: Eldar, Imperial Guards, Space Marines Terminators, and Genestealers. I made lists of around 500 points for each faction, and gave each faction a choice of two unique objectives; players would choose one as their victory condition, hidden from the other players.

The Eldar turn their attention to the other flank of the table, as the Imperial Guards make their last stand.

I needed a dropship for the scenario, and as none of us had one at hand, I decided to find a cheap plastic toy and paint it up for the scenario - the process and result will be the topic of the next post.

The game ended in four turns, with Adrian's Eldar attaining their objective of killing at least one figure from all the other factions on the table, and Nowfel (playing my genestealers) killing the last of the Imperial Guards faction.

We then enjoyed the tea that Wahj made us while Adrian set up for the next game: Zombicide: Invasion.

We played the first scenario of the game, but realised we got the rules wrong. Fortunately, there was time to reset and play it again.

It was a closer game the second time round, but as the scenario was pretty linear and we planned our moves together, we managed to win the game with no casualties.

Just in time for dinner and beer.

It felt good to get together and share laughs and food with my friends again after a tough month of May.

For our game in July, I am probably going to run a Spanish Civil War game using the Hell and Uncivil Disorder rules. Stay tuned.